Once Halloween has passed, and Thanksgiving has gone through the woods, once the Hanukkah candles have been lit and the prayers are complete, the attentions of a small town such as Woodstock inevitably turn toward the climax of the holiday season, the arrival of old Saint Nick himself on Christmas Eve on the village green.
Since the 1930s, it has become a town tradition for Santa Claus to appear, as if by magic, in some form or fashion, even as he plies his worldwide trade, dropping off billions (yes, billions) of presents on this single night! Magic, indeed!
In recent years, in the 2000s, we can remember Santa arriving in a flying rainbow-painted VW bus. Another year, it was in a house built atop a fire engine. He’s been pulled in carts by several species and ridden in a trolley car. He once appeared clutching the rooftop steeple of the Dutch Reformed Church, and another atop the stores across Tinker street.
You get the picture.
Back in 1951, while Woodstock’s Christmas Eve Committee made its preparations, the national magazine, Collier’s, a rival of the Saturday Evening Post, featured on its cover a John Pike watercolor of Christmas on the Woodstock village green. It was a pastoral Rockwell-like setting, much reduced in population from the street-stuffed crowds that gather today.
The method of Santa’s arrival has always been a deep secret, known only to a coveted few. What was also not general knowledge — and kids, cover your ears here — was that a Santa surrogate was at work most often, engaged to cover for the real Saint Nick. Through some sort of prestidigitation, an individual could actually become Santa for the ceremony.
One year in the not-too-recent past, it was determined that Santa should arrive riding bareback on an animal. No, not just any animal. On the back of an elephant!
Where they got the eight-foot-tall, 8800-pound Asian Elephas Maximus was another of the event’s well-kept secrets. You can imagine what it was like trying to keep her hidden in Woodstock.
The elephant (her trainer, who came along with her, called her Sweetheart) dwarfed Old Joe, that year’s designated Santa. It didn’t help that Sweetheart arrived late to the party. and that Joe didn’t have much, or any, experience riding that high. When the two parties were introduced to one another at the firehouse staging area, Sweetheart was bemused and Joe, well, he could have been having a nervous breakdown.
About ten minutes before Santa was due at the village green, Joe was in full white-bearded red regalia, waiting for the trainer to help him on board. But he got a little too close to Sweetheart and sneezed, which caused his rather large companion to shuffle her front feet. She stepped close to Joe, who pulled his right foot away. And the weighty animal’s foot just barely touched Joe’s little toe, which, though barely nipped, painfully swelled up immediately. Joe screamed and dropped his beard, ran down the hallway, and wasn’t seen again until the following Tuesday, which was New Year’s Eve.
(An excerpt follows from an exclusive interview with Santa Claus by a Woodstock Times editor, sometime after the holidays, someplace warm.)
WT: So where were you when you heard of the toe business?
Santa: Well, we were somewhere in the south of France, dropping off presents when word came through the ELF (Evolutionary Levitation Fone) network that there was a problem in a small town in the Catskills. I had known of the town, of course, because it was famous, and, well, hey, I’m Santa Claus. I always paid attention to Woodstock because it’s such a loving ceremony, one that started its traditional ceremonies with my appearances as a way to distribute food to the needy during the depression of the 1930s.
WT: How long have you been doing this Santa Claus thing?
Santa: Oh, I guess began around 280 A.D. when they called me Saint Nicholas. Somewhere along the way, I became known as the patron saint of children. Over the years my purview stretched out, and we began giving little gifts — tokens, really. Now we’ve got to carry around big-screen TVs, Ford F-150s, all kinds of crazy electronic devices…
WT: What do you do when you’re not making gifts, or delivering them?
Santa: Well, it’s pretty much a year-round thing these days. But I don’t mind sitting around for a few days in February to recharge, maybe relax with a good cigar, feed the reindeer. Ms. Claus and I get away for a few days…
WT: What did you do when you heard about Woodstock possibly not having a Santa for the village green event?
Santa: Well what could I do? It threw off the whole schedule, a million presents here, couple of hundred thousand there, calibrating the operation. Thank goodness I have a good crew, with the elves back at the plant, who quickly devised a whole new schedule. I had to go to Woodstock…
The Woodstock town clerk (who was chief of the Christmas Eve Committee that year) picks up the story from there. “When Joe got his toe crushed, I thought we were done for … no Santa on Christmas Eve. I looked around, saw Sam, thought, no good, too skinny. Same with Rennie. And we had no costume! Joe had run off wearing it. Can’t have a Santa wearing overalls…. I thought maybe I could get a hat and become Ms. Santa for a year…
We were getting desperate. Five minutes to departure, no Santa.
And then I heard him. ‘Ho, Ho, let’s go!’ I looked up and saw him on top of Sweetheart, looking completely at home, and I thought, oh, great, Joe got it together! Now if he can only hold it together.
But there was something different about him. His beard was whiter and longer, and he was calm and confident, where Joe had been on the verge of cracking up.
And Sweetheart was completely at ease. and enjoying herself, too. A sack overflowing with wrapped presents accompanied Santa. I wondered where that had come from.
Anyhow, the show went off beautifully. The crowds packed the streets. They were awed, but respectfully moved over when Sweetheart came through, Santa perched up high on her back, laughing, mugging for the people, throwing out gifts.
I thought, ‘Bravo, Joe, you’re our guy.’
It took Santa another hour to give out stockings to all the children, as the crowds, some nipping from flasks, stayed warm on a pretty cold night. They drifted off. Santa, somehow back up on Sweetheart, whispering in her ears, rode the lovely elephant back to the firehouse.
And he somehow appeared next to me there, though I didn’t see him climb down. He called me by my name, though he clearly wasn’t Joe, and said how much he had enjoyed the evening.
We (the whole committee) were going to The Pub after seeing Sweetheart securely taken care of, and I asked Santa if he’d like to come along. He said no, mumbling something about miles to go before he could sleep. He smiled deeply, and tapped the side of his nose with his index finger. And then was gone! I couldn’t tell if I’d imagined it or not, but I’ve never forgotten it.”
WT: So how’d you accomplish that, spending all that time here and still get to the rest of the world?
Santa: Well, you know, we have our ways. I mean, how do we get a billion packages distributed worldwide in one night? You gotta have faith, and a lot of help.
WT: Will you ever come back to Woodstock?
Santa: There’s an old legend that says if you spend three nights in the shadow of Overlook Mountain, you will always return to Woodstock. I have spent my three nights and more there (even saw Mingus at the Lake in ’77).
Truth is, I return to Woodstock once every year. See you on the green!
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